Free Press Staff Writer

If you go:

The veteran acoustic duo Indigo Girls has a strong following in Vermont, but fans might not know that the best-known song sung by Amy Ray and Emily Saliers was born in the Green Mountain state.

Saliers, in a recent phone conversation from Toronto, said her parents bought a tiny piece of land near Bradford and sat on it for many years because they couldn’t afford to build there. The family still came to Vermont for regular vacations, staying at farmhouses or cabins owned by friends.

It was on the porch of one of those cabins near Bradford in the late 1980s where Saliers wrote Indigo Girls’ biggest hit, “Closer to Fine,” a rousing song about reaching for inner peace that’s guaranteed to instigate a harmonic sing-a-long any time it’s performed in concert. (Saliers’ parents, by the way, eventually did build that cabin near Bradford, and her recently widowed father still owns it).

There’s a pretty good chance Ray and Saliers will play “Closer to Fine” when they perform Friday at the Flynn Center. But those who’ve seen the Girls in concert before might find a few changes, most notably the rocking Atlanta trio The Shadowboxers that will open the show and also play with Ray and Saliers.

Adding that electric element is refreshing for the two, Saliers said. “It definitely is for me and for Amy as well and hopefully for the fans, because we have toured predominantly as a duo for a few years,” she said. “To be with those young guys – they’re all 23 years old and fresh out of college – the energy we get is very uplifting.”

Indigo Girls are also part of a growing trend of pop musicians working with orchestras. Everyone from Elton John and Nanci Griffith to Natalie Merchant, Brandi Carlile and Sarah McLachlan — who last summer played at the Shelburne Museum with the Vermont Symphony Orchestra — has taken to fleshing out their music with symphonic sound.

The music of Indigo Girls, with its myriad chord changes and variations of tempo, lends itself well to a classical presentation. The duo began performing with symphonies last year and will again this year.

“There’s no doubt that it’s influenced the way I have sung and written harmony from the very beginning of my relationship with Amy,” Saliers said of classical music. Her parents were ardent classical-music lovers while she was growing up and she also sang in church choir. Saliers and Ray sang together in high-school chorus near Atlanta, she said, where classical music was a regular part of the repertoire.

“It’s going to be interesting for me, if nobody else, to see how this symphonic experience affects the new writing,” Saliers said. “My music isn’t too complicated but sometimes it gets too busy even for myself.”

She’s already feeling the influence from the orchestral performances. “It’s made me want to sit down and compose,” Saliers said. “I want to write a fugue all of a sudden. I can’t get enough Bach now.”